Poor George’s death was a merciful release, for although he was so well on in his teens, he was a mere dwarf, and had been ill since his birth—a sufferer from the so-called New Guinea disease, that incurable and mysterious disorder which eats away the legs. It is believed to be a form of leprosy. He was a fleshless, melancholy little being, who lay in bed all day, hardly ever moving. He had, however, all his senses, and it was pathetic to see him pursuing his only amusement, playing with the petals of flowers and with different coloured papers, of which he sometimes made strings. Sam must have missed Foralis very keenly, for the youngster was at a most attractive age, and was beginning to be very useful in various ways. He had become quite a bold little horseman, and would often ride on errands for his father. We spent five days at Port Moresby in the usual routine of packing for the homeward voyage, the first stage of which we performed on the small steamer _Parua_, which took us to Cooktown, where we were interested to note the relics of former mining activity, for the place enjoyed a brief spell of prosperity, during which pretentious banks and public buildings sprang up, and still stand there as if in mockery of its absolute deadness. The time was when they took fifty tons of gold from the Palmer River, but those days had long gone by, although there is certainly plenty of mineral wealth in the hinterland that is entirely unworked, and excellent for tin miners especially. No effort has been made to work this, and it is difficult to get money for even a gold mine at the back of Cooktown, so much British capital has been lost there in wild-cat schemes. A once busy railway still runs fitfully to the Palmer River. We stayed three weeks at Cooktown, and during the second week we witnessed a thunderstorm that transcended in violence the worst I had ever seen in South America, and that is saying a good deal. After an intensely oppressive morning, a black cloud came up from the westward, and the storm burst with startling suddenness. In less than half-an-hour every street was a veritable river, and the lightning, continuous and seemingly ubiquitous, was accompanied by cracking and rending thunder that could only be described as appalling. Fortunately, no one was killed, and the only damage was to the roof of Burns’s store, which was struck by lightning. Save for the thunderstorm, our stay at Cooktown was utterly uneventful, and at the end of the third week we went down to Sydney and came home by the White Star line. CHAPTER XV _NATIVE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS_